Mary

The Annunciation: Chris Koelle

Mary isn’t the first person to get an angelic message about an upcoming baby. Actually she’s the last in a long tradition. But she is different in a few not so obvious ways. Generally, even in Matthew, we are dealing with a man receiving the annunciation message. Matthew is strange because it is stated, before they came together Mary was “found to be pregnant with the holy spirit” so apparently Joseph is getting this news passively from the cipher Matthew makes of Mary. Only when this is not enough, when he cannot trust Mary, does Joseph get the dream. In the Bible, when babies are about to come it is the men who hear about it first. Two notable exceptions are the story of Rebecca where she is told directly by God that “two nations are striving in her belly” and in the story of Samson where we are told there was a man called Manoah, and he he had a wife. The “wife of Manoah:” receives the message from the angel about giving birth to the child who will be Samson, but the author of the Book of Judges, one of the rapiest books in a very rapey Bible, feels no need to give Manoah’s wife a name.

            Even Elizabeth received he news of her pregnancy second hand. Or third hand. A presumably male God sending an always male angel to a necessarily male priest. But with Mary this changes. Luke is introducing an innovation which Matthew actually hinted. Right here, for the first time, the view shifts from a man to a woman, shifts to a girl. Mary. The blessed cipher of every gospel becomes the protagonist (if only for a time) of this one.

            She is not the only female protagonist in the Bible, but she is one of a small number. Ruth has her own book and so does Esther. Both of these little books in Judaism are called megillah, not histories, not prophecy, and not Torah, they are read on certain holy occasions throughout the year. Then there is the book of Judith, which was eventually excluded from both the Hebrew and the Protestant canon, but now kept in Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican Bibles as “apocrypha”. Mary is tied to all of these women as well as Elizabeth and Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel who features so prominently at the beginning of the book bearing her son’s name.

           

 “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

³⁴ And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” ³⁵ And the angel said to her,

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born^[d] will be called holy,
the Son of God.

There are many things to be concerned about or to question in this angel’s promise, but Mary is concerned about one thing in particular which is that she is not married, rather, that she is a virgin, and has never been with a man. Next the angel Gabriel tells her that she should not worry because the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, and the child which results will be called the Son of the Most High.

            This leaves us with two questions, the one which people seem most excited by of  the possibility or importance of Mary’s virginity, and the second which few people are ever concerned for, but which is far more important, which is the angel’s prediction, and just what it means.